Living a More Purposeful Life One Cent at a Time

You Are Enough

This blog post is part of the Suicide Prevention Awareness Month blog tour in partnership withDebt Drop. If you are feeling suicidal, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741.

You are not your money or your debt. No matter how many figures show up on your bank account balance or your statements each month, you are so much more than a number on a screen or a page. No matter what you have, you are enough.

Money is Tough

In the world as a whole, it is easy to get caught in the comparison trap. It causes debt. Often times, people find themselves in debt in the first place due to buying newer cars, bigger houses, or fancier degrees. But then you realize it doesn’t matter what the Joneses or any other family has. You get determined to do something about your debt. So you start.

That’s easier said than done, though. I’ve taken steps and I’ve made missteps, and the journey is still long. Why did I buy that? When will I feel like the debt is disappearing? How can I get better at money? There is no doubt about it. Money is tough.For every bit of impulse spending that is reined in, unexpected expenses crop up. Balancing e-funds and investments, saving and spending is a difficult act that no one gets right in one try.

Try anyway.

Success is Never Simple

In the personal finance world, it is easy to get caught in the comparison trap. It causes doubt. Sometimes, people get so focused on the accomplishments of others in terms of less debt, more income, or more freedom. But then you realize that the only story that matters is yours. You get determined to keep moving forward, keep making progress, keep writing your story. So you continue.

That’s easier said than done, though. Sometimes, I find myself at a loss. Why aren’t things coming together for me faster? When will my story really be worth telling? How can I make money magic happen? The truth is simple. There is nothing easy about money. Success stories are distilled down into single posts after months, if not years and decades of work. While the struggles aren’t always showcased, they happened. There is strength in the struggle.

Push on.

You Are Enough

It is so easy to let debt cloud out the rest of the picture. Days, weeks, months would pass by where money was all I thought about. Six figures of debt. If so many other people could escape it so quickly, surely I could come up with some sort of solution. Couldn’t I? It controlled my thoughts and disrupted my sleep, blanketing truths like friends love me, family needs me, and sometimes a little hunk of chocolate can really go a long way to making the world just a little bit right again. Virtually every decision I made was based on money. I earned extra money, I got better at investing, and I still felt like I could be doing so much more.

Slowly, I have realized that while I may always be able to do more, what I am right now is enough. I am a step in the right direction. I am wiser than yesterday. I am a few cents richer. I am enough.

So are you.

While I cannot claim to know what it’s like to contemplate suicide as a result of debt, I do know that depression, anxiety, and all other types of mental illness are, in fact, illnesses. We do not cause them. We do not deserve them. We can do something about them.

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7 Comments

I practice Gratitude each and every day. On my drive to work or simply running an errand, I take the time to be thankful for things . . . I’ll literally list them in my head and say ‘thanks’ . . . each and every day. I try to do the same things with my students every now and then as a class ice breaker.

Because the world itself is constantly training the brain in the wrong ways, I’m a big believer that you have to exercise your brain in the right ways. Practicing Gratitude pays dividends (financial pun intended). hehe.

Thanks for the thoughtful post, Penny. Most of us have been touched by suicide or attempted suicide in one way or another. The thought that someone might move in that direction based on financial concerns is truly disturbing. There is much that can be done, at every income level, to better one’s financial circumstances. I’m fond of saying that “money is very easy to come by, but incredibly hard to hold on to.” It’s mastering that second one, mostly by the choices we make, that will make all the difference. Thanks for being a voice for positive change.

Positivity and thankfulness really go a long way, both for yourself and others. We’re taught to be nice to other people, but we forget that kindness extends to ourselves, too. Unkindness and negativity inside ourselves leads to treating others badly; it all comes full circle. The best approach is to stay positive.

Keeping things in perspective is really important for me. It’s hard to look at your net worth in comparison to other PF bloggers who seem to have figured it all out, at a much earlier age. But we really do have so many blessings, despite the debt. And things could be far, far worse.

Money can be a powerful tool, but it is only money at the end of the day.

I have no idea how I got to the place of peace, but to stay here, I work hard at being grateful for everything we do have – and it’s bigger than money. That’s actually probably the answer. Somewhere in the dark days of denial about my chronic illness changing my life, I started realizing how much worse it will be someday. And every day that I still have mobility, my consciousness, my ability to communicate – those are all good days.

The saddest suicide I heard of recently was a young man in his 20’s, a friend of my nephew’s. Neither his parents nor his identical twin brother knew what he was depressed about. The family will never be the same.

We just returned from Glacier National Park. While there, the vastness of the world and how small we are in comparison was not lost on us. Keeping that in mind, our problems may seem minuscule. Of course mental illness doesn’t always revolve around a particular set of problems. That’s why it’s so important to intervene (sometimes very gently) if you know someone suffering from depression or having suicidal thoughts.